Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Günay Aliyeva, Founder of oroom and Co-Founder of catbyte. Read more about Günay in this interview:
 
Hi Günay! Could you tell us a bit about your journey and vision of (co-)founding not one but even two companies?

My roots are Baku city, Azerbaijan. Google it, it is beautiful! <3
Moved to Germany nine years ago for my M.Sc degree. Worked the last seven+ years in different start-ups in Berlin & Hamburg to learn about the app industry and gain expertise.

Founding is like art – you can create something beautiful from scratch, enjoy the process and take pride in the result, which in addition also brings you money. What a beautiful concept! In this context it does not really matter if it is one, two or more companies. I believe it is a mental stamina one should have to be a founder. To back it up you need relevant skills and expertise, which can usually be learned. Meaning, if you have one successful company, you will probably have more coming up.

Throughout your broad career spectrum, which job did you find your favorite learning experience in?

Founding. It is like tapping into a totally new skill set you could never learn anywhere else. 
I have already worked many years in start-ups, managed large budgets and teams, but founding a company is incomparably different from any of those jobs. It is more challenging in many ways, but also more rewarding, which makes every difficulty worth it. 
If you have a solid experience in the relevant industry and enough savings to support yourself for a while – definitely go for it. You will only gain; whatever is the outcome.

In your opinion, what are key strategies or values that make a studio or game successful?

Baby-steps and being accepting that you will often be wrong. 
A lot of people make a mistake of trying to build a perfect “MVP” app with perfect final features as they imagined it, which is a clear path to failure. You might have a perfect vision and a brilliant idea you are sure will be successful. But chances are – it won’t.

Launch a bare minimum MVP and analyse the heck out of a usage data you have, and adjust, adjust, adjust. Having SOME product in the market with SOME user data to back it up is better than wasting time and resources to make a perfect product that is backed up with only your vision. 
You should always be open to let go of your ideas and come up with better ones. Only this way you can make a start-up successful, and grow yourself with it.

Thank you for your time, Günay!

Günay’s Links: LinkedIn │ oroom │ catbyte

Womenize! – Inspiring Stories Feature by Sophie Brügmann